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Friday, 9 December 2016

There are advantages to a late sunrise in this Northern hemisphere winter.

It was freezing and the park was unnaturally empty.

I have shown these parakeets that escaped London zoo in the 1960's and they hang about the London royal parks. They are spoiled as they get people who stick apples on the branches for them to snack on.

I normally am not into cross country skiing but we had an afternoon before dinner at Faviken. There was early snowfall so the crowds hadn't gone up yet and it was midweek so we had the trails to ourselves.We did hear howling in the middle of at least one of my mates falling down and in the distance we saw a dog sled.This image was worth the trip to Sweden alone.

There are these peculiar stores in Sweden that sell tobacco ( cigars, cigarettes, and loose ) and then on the other side...

They sell every variety of chocolates and sweets.

I have a feeling that they smoke more than tobacco.

I hadn't seen this much Mountain Dew since I was at a Walmart in Carlsbad, New Mexico.

The lodge we were staying at in Are had original drawings from the late 1800's.

Monday, 5 December 2016

Thing is...I'm a foodie.No, no, no, not that kind.I was a foodie since the 70's when only chefs and bulimics would obsess about food.Apparently my first documented sentence was in Korean and translated literally was,"My stomach is so full I could die."( It means that one had a lot to eat minus the dramatics.)I was the sort of kid that would get free meals at restaurants because the owner or manager would be amazed at how much I was enjoying my food and asking questions about where the food was from.I had told this to a karmic astrologer who was also a Wicca witch in the ley lines of the west country and she explained the reason why I was obsessed with food was because I had starved in a previous life due to having been a refugee due to a bad politically based arranged marriage.Either way, I love food.I loved food so much that when I had a chance, my friend from law school ( the one I mentioned in my previous post where I had a friend divorce and she got the hairdresser ) and I opened a cafe in London.Long story short, I became disillusioned and after the cafe closed, I just went back to watching cooking shows.Then the past decade and a half or so, there was a glut of people who were self proclaimed foodies."Oh, don't you just love dark chocolate?Gosh, I'm such a foodie I can't eat hershey's or cadbury's chocolate.""Gosh, I am craving Ethiopian food.I just need my monthly injera fix." says the bearded yet shaved bald bloke."I never, like, use margarine, like totally, only butter.Am I right? Seriously, right? "*eye roll* x 3Going to the latest trendy restaurant in London does nothing for me at all anymore. It might be a sign of age of course.But I don't appreciate, though understand, the 2 hour limit on table reservations.But by the time you greet your friends, sit down, look at the menu, keep telling every other waiter that checks on "if everything is okay" during and between every course, you hardly have time to catch up with people you chose to spend the evening with.Long time readers will remember I went to Noma 2 years ago and was underwhelmed.I tried to write a fair review not based on my personal palette.But equally I am not an anti-snob foodie either.I don't sneer at Michelin restaurants but I don't like food tokenism by forcing some feral surrounding while eating for hipsters.But it has been a long time since a fine dining restaurant has inspired me.Until last week.For me, Faviken has reignited enthusiasm.

The view as we got out of the taxi and the windows of the kitchen were lit.